What Does it Mean to Offer Ourselves Radical Acceptance?
For the last year I’ve been blessed to be working with Bill Baren, a wonderful business and life coach. We talk weekly and he has been by my side throughout the process of bringing NurturingHope.com from a spark of an idea to the actuality of a home for those of us who struggle with compulsive hoarding and eating.
There is a critical, self-loathing voice inside my head, and it seems like it has always been there for as long as I can remember. Perhaps you have one too. It tells me that I’m just not good enough, that maybe I don’t really have my life under control, that maybe I’m just a misstep or two away from living in squalor and filth again, that maybe my eating is already out of control and I’m back on the road to morbid obesity. It tells me that I can’t trust myself, that I have to be self-critical and hard on myself or my life will fall apart again. The voice both creates and expresses a sense of fear and anxiety that can be paralyzing at times.
A month or two ago I was discussing this self-critical voice with Bill. He asked me a question that boggled my mind: “Catherine, what would it take to accept the part of you that does not accept yourself?” At first this question seemed so paradoxical that I could not even comprehend it. My self-loathing voice is like an enemy who is determined to make me miserable, an enemy whom I cannot escape. I desperately wanted to eliminate this part of me, not accept it!
And then I stumbled across Radical Acceptance, a book by Tara Brach. Brach is a psychologist and a meditation instructor who has woven her own life experience, her clinical experience with clients and her Buddhist beliefs and practices into an approach to dealing with the crippling inadequacy so many of us feel. Brach tells her readers that they can offer every feeling and thought friendly acceptance — even feelings of inadequacy and our most self-criticizing thoughts.
In an interview posted on Beliefnet.com, Brach says:
When some people talk about accepting themselves they have this fear that they’re condoning some bad behavior, or that if they accept themselves, that means they’ll never improve. But the truth is, we’re not saying, “It’s OK that you did that bad thing.” All we’re accepting is the actuality of our experience in the moment: I’m accepting this shame is here, I’m accepting this fear is here, I’m accepting this anger, I’m accepting that there’s craving, I’m accepting the truth just now, that I acted out of that craving and I ate too much. I’m accepting how bad I feel about that. But in the moment of accepting, we’re not condoning. We’re just acknowledging the truth of what’s here with kindness. The reality is, if we can do that, it actually begins to free us so we can in the next moment, be a lot more wise.
Reading Radical Acceptance has opened a window for me into the possibility of a powerful sense of acceptance of all the thoughts and feelings I have, even those that I would prefer to be without. I feel like I’m just starting to get an inkling of how profound the practice of radical acceptance really can be.
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2 Responses to “What Does it Mean to Offer Ourselves Radical Acceptance?”
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I am new with this program, and do look forward so much for the help and support
Welcome Shirley and thanks for the comment!
I’m looking forward to hearing more from you as your journey unfolds.